McNerney looking for a bit of Clinton magic

Five months ago, Democratic congressional candidate Jerry McNerney couldn’t have imagined that he’d being sharing a rain-soaked Stockton stage with Bill Clinton. But there he was late Wednesday night, basking in the endorsement of the former president, the party’s hands-down superstar on the campaign trail.

McNerney, a Pleasanton wind-energy consultant, is locked in a tight race with seven-term incumbent Richard Pombo, the Republican from Tracy, for the 11th Congressional District seat. Republican voters outnumber Democrats 46 percent to 39 percent in the district, which spans from the East Bay to San Joaquin County.

The Record via AP

Two years ago, McNerney, who was new to electoral politics, challenged Pombo after entering the race as a write-in candidate. Pombo won easily.

McNerney tried again this year and won the June primary without the backing of the national Democratic Party. At the time, pundits didn’t think he had much of a chance to beat Pombo.

But that was then and this is now, a time when discontent with the war in Iraq and President Bush is front and center on voters’ minds, and the Democrats have their best shot at regaining control of the House of Representatives since they lost the majority 12 years ago. Taking back control of the Senate also is in the Democrats’ sights.

The upshot: Pombo, chair of the powerful House Resources Committee and a close ally of the Bush White House, faces his toughest election battle in a decade.

The Republicans know it. That’s why the national party has spent nearly $1.3 million on the race and why First Lady Laura Bush, a huge draw with her party’s faithful, is scheduled to campaign for Pombo Friday morning in Pleasanton.

And the Democrats know it. That’s why they sent Bill Clinton to Stockton.

Clinton has visited 27 states in recent weeks to stump for Democratic candidates in the nation’s most competitive races. McNerney’s contest was put on the schedule Tuesday.

More than 500 people — the McNerney campaign estimated the number may have exceeded 1,000 — sat through the season’s first significant rain storm to cheer Clinton, McNerney and a handful of other Democratic candidates and state party officials at the get-out-the-vote rally held on the tarmac at the Stockton airport.

The main event didn’t get going until after 10 p.m. — more than an hour late — but that didn’t blunt the crowd’s enthusiasm.

McNerney got things rolling, attacking Pombo and repeating the Democratic Party’s mantra this election season that voters have a chance to change the direction of the country.

“Every single vote counts,” he said.

Then it was Clinton’s turn.

“It’s late. You stood here in the rain and you did it for a reason. You know it matters,” said Clinton, who flew into Stockton from San Francisco, where he headlined a fundraiser that generated more than $2 million for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s final efforts leading into Tuesday’s election.

“You’ve got a few days,” Clinton continued. “And when you go to work tomorrow, when you walk down the street tomorrow, when you go to the grocery store, when you go anywhere, you look in the eyes of the people you meet … and you tell them you don’t care what your political party is, you don’t care what they’ve done in the past. You’re not mad at anybody. You just know we can do better.”

He said Republicans have run up the national debt, gotten American troops into a war with no clear exit strategy and have done little to help the middle class. Given that, he said, the Republicans are hoping to capitalize on people’s fears to prevail on Election Day.

The GOP’s message, according to Clinton, is this: “If you vote for those Democrats, they’re going to tax you into the poor house, and on the way to the poor house you’ll meet a terrorist on every street corner. And when you try to run away from the terrorist, you will trip over an illegal immigrant.”